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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22722319">Orbital Eccentricity</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/shimadagans/pseuds/shimadagans'>shimadagans</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Destiny (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Old Men Coming to Terms With Each Other, Scheming Ghosts, The Dawning (Destiny)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 16:01:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,279</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22722319</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/shimadagans/pseuds/shimadagans</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"Three nights ago, he’d never thought this reality could be possible. Dreamed of it, yes, of course. But never had he dared to hope, after failure upon failure…"</p><p>Saint-14 returns from implausibility. Osiris contemplates how this makes him feel.<br/>Also, why is everyone pestering him about this?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Osiris/Saint-14 (Destiny)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>107</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Orbital Eccentricity</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When he’d first heard of Saint-14’s return, he hadn’t dared to believe it.</p><p>Even with feedback evidence playing through the channels of no less than eight of his own Echoes, the same brightness playing in prickly looped feeds; the very idea of his return makes Osiris’ mouth drier than any Mercurian desert.</p><p>His emergence from the large Vex gate is nothing short of heroic, of course. Osiris knows better than anyone how time and distance can make men seem like myths, but there has always been something about Saint-14, about the way he carries himself, that speaks of some deeply-held sense of purpose. He watches as the Titan smashes his way through the remnants of a Vex search party, suppressing a snort at his iconic headbutt.</p><p>“Must he always do that?” he asks aloud, with nobody but his Echoes and Sagira to hear him.</p><p>“You know he does,” comes Sagira’s answer as the Echoes return to their duties, gold forms flickering like flames.</p><p>He lights a single candle that night, one of the ones those misguided ‘followers’ seem to leave nearby with other ‘supplies’ whenever they stake out his newest temporary station. He’s not running, per say, merely…making it hard for the Vex to track him. Or the Cabal. Or Vance, but nobody needs to know that.</p><p>He lights a single candle, partly in penance, for what he could never accomplish. But also partly in hope, in cognizance of the return of an indomitable will, and he sets the candle on a ledge just inside the archway of his field station, of the little cave he moved supplies to just three nights ago.</p><p>Three nights ago, he’d never thought this reality could be possible. Dreamed of it, yes, of course. But never had he dared to hope, after failure upon failure…</p><p>He lets the thought suspend itself in his mind, meditates on it, and by the time the next morning comes and he finds his way to the Sundial once again, he’s laid it to rest, at least for now.</p><p>There’s no time to doubt, now. There is so much to do, now. He spends hours examining the ways this…gracious abnormality has affected the rippling, fractured timelines, tracking thread upon thread in the tapestry he’s made his cerebral home in. He barely recognizes when a figure slips into the Sundial where his physical form remains.</p><p>He sighs back into his body, leaving an Echo in his place, and looks right into the visor of the Guardian who brought Saint-14 back.</p><p>“You saw him come back,” they say, never one for much chatter.</p><p>“I did,” he tries to feign nonchalance, but Sagira buzzes past his shoulder with troubling intent, “Hello, Guardian. Oh, we <em>saw</em>,” she pivots to narrow her oculus at him, “He lit a candle and everything, a disastrous romantic—”</p><p>“Enough, Sagira,” he coughs into his scarf, and she smugly floats back to his side, “He returned to the City, I presume?”</p><p>“He was here, for a while, walking around,” the Guardian gestures to the battle-worn Mercury hills beyond the Sundial’s temporal walls, “But then he went to the City, yeah. Something about wanting to see the birds?”</p><p>He breathes out a sigh that Sagira will call ‘fond’ later and that he, himself will call ‘foolish’, “Of course. That sounds like him.”</p><p>The Guardian regards him for a moment, and Osiris curses their innate lack of expression, never seen without their helmet. Their gaze doesn’t seem judgmental, but Osiris feels magnified all the same.</p><p>“He asked about you,” they say, and he feels the warmth of the sun even through the dome of his finally useful creation, “Wanted to know where you were. Said he didn’t figure you’d gone back to the City after he, y’know. After everything. Told him where you were, and he thanked me.”</p><p>“Ah. I see,” and he gives Sagira a <em>look</em> after she makes a disbelieving click at him, “Thank you for informing me, Guardian. Anything else? I have,” he makes a feeble attempt at seeming busy, turning to closely examine the Sundial’s main panel, “Much work to do, now that there has been a significant change to our timeline.”</p><p>They simply shake their head at him, turning away and waving over their shoulder at him as they transmat out. Their Ghost blinks at him, once, before it too disappears.</p><p>“Wow, didn’t think another Ghost could look so disappointed in you,” Sagira murmurs from over his shoulder, “I thought that was just <em>my </em>job.”</p>
<hr/><p>He hears more about Saint-14’s return over the next few days, from various visitors. The Guardian comes by with their fireteam on their way to the Sundial and makes it a point to mention how Saint has been asking about him, their Ghost giving him a knowing once-over. Ikora stops by for her regular visit the next afternoon, and over tea, baklava, and a box of the donut holes the whole City seems to be gifting her, Saint comes up in conversation <em>again</em>, much to his chagrin.</p><p> “He’s adjusting well, all things considered,” she says, making deliberate eye contact with him. She’s never been afraid to point out things he’d rather not talk about. When he was Commander to most and just Osiris to only a few, he’d thought she was too sharp for her own good, too clever. Now, she is proud, but tempered by grief and loss and the weight of the City. She’s made a fine member of the Vanguard, herself, finer than himself, at least.</p><p>He swallows back the praise, knowing she’ll only admonish him for it, “That is good to hear. Many things have changed since he last walked the streets.”</p><p>Ikora sets down her teacup and regards him with a raised eyebrow, “That’s it?”</p><p>“I haven’t the slightest idea what you mean by that,” he retorts, “Do enlighten me.”</p><p>She phrases her next words carefully, as if she’s afraid of upsetting him for once, “The two of you haven’t talked since he returned, have you?”</p><p>He has half a mind to tell her it’s quite really no one’s business to know if they have or not, but Ikora does not deserve his temper, especially not over something that is no fault of hers. He breathes in, holds for a moment, and listens to their Ghosts’ chatter from the next room over.</p><p>“No,” he answers, guilt filling his chest, “We haven’t.”</p><p>“And…” she gestures to him, “You think he wouldn’t want to, after what has happened.”</p><p>“You really are too clever,” he replies, taking another sip of his tea, knowing she will see the real answer with or without his cowardly input.</p><p>She gives him a wry smile and directs her gaze back towards her favorite treats. Her words remain as pointed as ever, “You barely gave yourself time to grieve after we lost him, and now you’re faced with possibilities you don’t think you deserve. I know how it feels, to have lost and lost.” She traces the rim of her teacup thoughtfully, “But have you asked him what he thinks, or what he wants?”</p><p>“Ikora,” he warns, not quite agreeing with what this conversation is doing to his nervous system, “I am out here, on the frontier, doing what I know I <em>must</em> do, in order to protect the City, to protect humanity. I have very little time to consider myself and even less time to consider how Saint-14 might feel about when we last spoke.”</p><p>It’s a lie, a blatant one, and a hurtful one at that. He’s stewed in his own downfalls more times than he and his Echoes could count put together, and he’s refused any prodding from Sagira to visit the tomb the Vex ensnared the Titan’s frame in. The images he’s seen still rattle around in his head, like spun glass marbles. His careful Ghost’s empty shell clutched in ramrod gauntlets. It haunts him if his head’s too empty, if he doesn’t catch himself.</p><p>“I won’t tell you what to do,” she doesn’t fully call him on it, bless her, “But I believe it would be best if you talked to him before he talks to you.”</p><p>Despite the clear sweetness of the tea, his mouth remains bitter long after her ship vanishes from sight.</p>
<hr/><p>The vastness of the Infinite Forest still gives even him pause if he thinks about it too broadly. A whole anomaly made for naught but simulation after simulation. A younger Osiris had proudly claimed to himself that he’d explored every corner, but present Osiris knows better than to wager against the Vex.</p><p> There are places he knows he will never see, as guaranteed as anything can be in a place where timelines can snag like hand-woven silk and impossibilities become trivialities in an instant.</p><p>Still, it’s here where Osiris now finds himself most at home. He can find a quiet corner in the microcosm and bend the frame of the world to fit his expectations. Or, at times like this, when he needs to think most, he can split his focus between his body, set in a meditative stance, and several Echoes as they comb timelines for irregularities. There are plenty of Cabal to set straight, so he severs several timelines apart and sends a dozen or so shimmering forms coursing through the simulation.</p><p>He lights another candle on the floor of the Sundial, summons his prophecy cubes, leans back against the interface, and he thinks.</p><p>The last time he had seen Saint-14, the last time they had truly talked, face to face, they had said…unkind things. Well, truly, Osiris had said unkind things, about Saint, about his will, about the Speaker, and Saint had responded in the way he knew best: making Osiris keenly aware of his own weaknesses.</p><p>Solar energy coalesces within. Breathe in. Breathe out.</p><p>There had been a few, short messages exchanged, and several curt responses from himself. How prideful he’d been, back then, so convinced that his way was the only right way; that being alone was tantamount to being correct. Many years beating back simulations that were real enough they could snuff one’s Light out just like the real thing had taught him there are no absolutes, not anymore. Too many variables overlapping, stacking odds against one another until <em>something</em> collapses. Sometimes, in the forest, it’s humanity that falls. Sometimes, it’s the whole system, when someone or something particularly power-hungry destroys the Sun. He knows now how valuable each front is, how his insight can help immediately. Ikora had taken to having her Hidden stop by for reports from him when they craved information, and he has so far found their company enlightening. They bring him news, sometimes about the things happening out in the system, about the Hive on the Moon, or the Scorn in the Reef.</p><p>Sometimes, they talk about the City, and how it has changed.</p><p>Few of them have been around for as long as he has, but to them, the City as it is now is home. Perhaps it will feel like home to him, too, when he returns.</p><p>He wonders. He wonders how Saint-14 feels about the City, now. He wonders if he has walked the ruins as people have claimed Zavala does. He wonders if Saint speaks to Shaxx more often, now that the ground between them is more civil. He wonders if Guardians approach him like a hero, or like a myth.</p><p>One thing he knows for certain, none of the greenhorns know Saint as well as he does. This simple truth gives him warmth not from his meditation nor from the lit candle.</p><p>His interface lights up with an incoming message marked “URGENT” from a source that hasn’t pinged Sagira in a very long time.</p><p>“You saw that, right?” she resyncs with his apparatus, voice switching from faraway to stereo, “It’s from…Geppetto?”</p><p>It’s only a text file, a tiny, decrepit thing, and all it says is: “tower hangar. he needs you. NOW.”</p><p>“Sagira—” he starts, but Sagira is already bringing his ship around by the time he fully returns to himself, and he’s in the cockpit before he’s realized he’s being transmatted.</p><p>“What?” she says, almost smug as she inputs the coordinates for the Tower from his interface, “Did you really think I didn’t already know what you were going to do? Please, Osiris,” she tuts as he adjusts the pilot’s seat, “I wasn’t formed yesterday.”</p><p>He chooses not to reply as he sets his sight on the retreating Mercury horizon.</p>
<hr/><p>Luckily, when he bursts into the hangar (having chosen <em>not </em>to make a scene by disembarking in the main landing zone), there are not many people around, and none that seem to recognize him.</p><p>He gets a “Hey, Warlock,” from someone behind a half-repaired ship hull, but otherwise nobody pays him any mind as he rushes to what he immediately recognizes as the Grey Pigeon.</p><p>It looks nearly the same as the last time he saw it, the only visible difference being the added ribbons trailing along it. There are books and candles and, of course, pigeons lingering just outside the ramp into the ship, but Osiris ignores all of that in favor of the Titan standing among them, gazing out of the hangar and absentmindedly tossing the birds crumbs. He stops in his tracks at the edge of the slightly frayed (and somehow familiar) rug that leads up to where Saint stands, and Saint catches him in his periphery, birdfeed slipping through his gloved fingers as he turns to face him fully.</p><p>“Osiris?” Saint asks, his voice still somehow cutting right through the hangar, even with how hushed his tone is.</p><p>“Saint,” he answers, and he barely registers anything else before he’s being lifted a full three feet off the ground by a very large armored Exo.</p><p>“I cannot believe you are here!” Saint exclaims, his voice bouncing off all the hangar’s exposed scaffolding, causing the few ship technicians still around to stare, “The Guardian said you had your hands full with the Cabal in your Sundial, but here you are!”</p><p>Osiris is embarrassingly lacking in words, even as Saint lowers him back to the ground. Saint-14 is here, alive, and <em>alight</em>. He busies himself with picking a stray pigeon feather from the spikes of Saint’s pauldron to give himself a few moments to gather his wits again. Saint, as patient as ever, simply ushers him to the interior of his ship.</p><p>“Sagira received an urgent ping, from your Ghost.” He finally manages, once the coziness of the Pigeon has breached his defenses, “I came as quickly as I could, I feared—” and now, the words come rushing, “I feared the worst had happened, that we would lose you again, that I—” he swallows, dry-mouthed, “That I had <em>failed</em> again.”</p><p>Saint tuts thoughtfully from the counter of his little kitchen nook, returning to the table he’d sat Osiris at with mugs of tea in hand, “I sent no such ping, but it is an immense joy to see you here, in the flesh.” He pushes a mug gently into Osiris’ hands, tone going teasing, “Had I known that a simple emergency would have brought you to me, I would have summoned you sooner.”</p><p>Osiris glances at their Ghosts, huddled together in the cockpit, and comes to the immediate conclusion that he was a mere pawn in their scheme.</p><p>“How are you settling?” he asks, because damn him, if he is already here, he might as well try to be pleasant.</p><p>Saint-14 studies him for a moment, and with his helmet off, his gaze is laser-focused, “Well enough. It is good to be around people again, but it has been an adjustment.” He taps his free hand’s fingers on the table, voice a rumble in the space between them, “Many things have changed since I was here last, but many things are also the same.” He leans in a little closer to Osiris, head cocked, “Why are you still out on Mercury, hm?”</p><p>Osiris opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again before Saint continues, “The City is a different place for you, too, now, and yet…” Saint gives a one-armed shrug, “You are still absent from it. I would think, with Father’s presence gone…”</p><p>Osiris shifts uncomfortably in his seat, eyes falling to his mug, “I am…sorry. He was a casualty of the Red War. Perhaps, if I had been there—”</p><p>A large hand comes to his over his on the table, “Good to see your head is still as big as ever,” Saint has the gall to chuckle, “Even stripped of light and on another planet, you assume you hold the blame for everything.”</p><p>When he tries to pull his hand away, frustrated with how Saint is making light of this, the Exo catches him by the wrist, “Why do you flee so quickly? Like a bird, always ready to fly away at the smallest sign.” Osiris bristles, “I am no <em>pigeon</em>, Saint. I am fully aware of my mistakes and my shortcomings. And I do not ‘fly away’.”</p><p>Saint sighs at this, giving Osiris’ hand a squeeze, and he feels warmth climb up his arm and settle in his shoulders at the gesture, so soft he doesn’t feel like he deserves it, “You misunderstand. I mean to say that it was not your fault, it couldn’t have been. Neither was my…disappearance. Ah—” he shakes his head when Osiris opens his mouth to retort, “Let me speak.” He turns Osiris hand palm up and traces the valleys of it like he’s afraid he’ll break it, and Osiris feels himself begrudgingly relaxing at the familiar touch as Saint continues, “We left each other on unkind terms. I have not carried many regrets in my time, but this was one of them.”</p><p>He heaves a sigh so deep that Osiris feels like he’s drowning in the scent of coolant, “I regret that the last thing I said to you wasn’t kind. We are so different, you and I, in how we speak. Maybe I speak too plainly, but I had always thought what I felt was clear.”</p><p>“I think you overestimate my perception,” Osiris responds dryly, fingers curling slightly as Saint presses his thumb into the meat of his hand, further warmth blooming across his chest, “I like to think I am wiser now, but perhaps I don’t speak plainly enough.”</p><p>“Maybe me calling you ‘Brother’ has not helped much,” Saint agrees, punctuating his statement with a chortle, “You should know I have cared deeply about you for many years, now. In the Forest, when there was little else to do but think, I thought a lot about you.”</p><p>The simple admission makes Osiris feel like his heart has leaped into his throat, and he flips his hand so he can tangle their fingers together, “Did you not know I felt the same?”</p><p>“I had an idea,” Saint’s face plates shift into a grin, cheeky, “You didn’t argue with anyone else nearly as much.”</p><p>“They were not worth the time,” Osiris feels his lips curling into a half-smile, unbidden, and then, it slips out, “I missed you.”</p><p>Saint-14 pauses in his tracing, and Osiris swears his optics glow brighter, violet, before he releases his hand. There’s a moment where he feels like he’s plummeting until Saint reaches slowly across the table to trail a feather-light touch over his jaw, “Oh, <em>dove</em>,” he sighs, and Osiris feels even his face go warm at the old endearment, reaching up to rest his hand over Saint’s, “I missed you, too.”</p><p>For the first time since he left the City, Osiris feels at home.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Did you know? Mercury has the greatest orbital eccentricity of any planet in our solar system.<br/>Did you also know? There's no way these old dudes aren't super in love.<br/>Here's my first Destiny fic, though I've been playing the game pretty avidly since 2014 or so, and been playing Bungie games even longer than that. I've always liked that Destiny had more of a focus on characters than Halo did, and what better way to acknowledge that than write about old friends who DEFINITELY aren't in love?</p></blockquote></div></div>
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